8. LIGHTING

Although I'm putting lighting here because this is when I finalized it, I actually did the bulk of the lighting work concurrently with the texturing because they both relied on each other. I wanted to make sure that the model's skin and clothing had a translucent effect to them, because - especially with the geometric style - I didn't want everything to look like it was made of clay, or an awkward place between "real" and "fake". The cel-shading system I was using dictated the kind of renderer I was using, which dictated what kind of textures I could use, which dictated the kind of lights to best complement them. So, working with what I had, I tried to nail down the mood I wanted to evoke. For a lot of these tests, I made quick, temporary sets purely for illustrative purposes.

Around this point, I was also finalizing my set design. I actually never had a solid image for the setting - I only wanted it to function as a part of the color palette, and to create a size contrast for the character so that it feels like a vast, but unspecific, place. So while I knew I wanted an angular, stylistic look for the environments, I designed them to fit the composition of the shot rather than the other way around.